Wales' first rugby agent has given a fascinating, and sometimes bizarre, insight into negotiating contracts for the game's biggest names in the late 1990s.

Former centre Adam Palfrey set up Total Sports Management a few years after the game went professional post-1995 Rugby World Cup with solicitor Alan Jenkins, who'd handled his contract while plying his trade with the likes of Cardiff, Newport, Swansea, Neath, and later in his rugby career Caerphilly.

Literally overnight, the company had 80 players on their books with Welsh front-rowers Darren Morris and Ben Evans their first two major signings, and before long the likes of Neil Jenkins and Dafydd James came on board.

Fellow Welsh internationals Ian Evans, Robert Sidoli, Iestyn Thomas, Jamie Robinson, Nathan Budgett and Mark Jones were also signed up and having so many stellar names under his wing, Palfrey, who recently spent the last two years working for Italian football giants Inter Milan, in Asia, has opened up about the early years as an agent.

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Adam Palfrey during his days as Inter Milan's new head of sales in Asia

His tales of the days when regulations and guidelines governing rugby agents were lax, to say the least, includes his first sealing of a £100,000-a-year deal for a Welsh player, contract talks for a string of his clients with a naked club coach and a peculiar clause from a top overseas player never to let his wife know how much he was earning.

And with rugby set to see it's first £1m a season player when former All Black Charles Piutau moves from Ulster to Bristol next summer, Palfrey has lifted the lid on the early years of a professional player when some of Wales' star names still had to buy their boots.

The naked meeting

"Being a player, I had access to all other players," said Palfrey, who recently set up the Refreshing Sponsorship & Strategic Partnerships Agency, in Cardiff on his return from Asia with Inter Milan.

"But in no time we had 80 players on our books.

“It was only over the next couple of months and years we found out we could only work really effectively for around 20 per cent of the ones we had on our books.

"The the early days contracts for players were a take it or leave it discussion and I remember an interesting character from the Bridgend area telling me in no uncertain terms if a player didn't like the terms he could go and play somewhere else.

"It was all so new I remember heading off to a club for a contract talks over a number of my clients and being told to head down to the changing rooms.

"Walking in there was a naked coach who asked if I had a problem with him having no clothes on.

"We conducted the whole meeting with him in that state.

"I'm sure the bravado was trying to put me off and get the best deal he could for the club.

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"That figure for a Test player soon became the norm and it has risen ever since.

"Some senior and overseas players on my books would try and get a job for their wives or girlfriends thrown in but perhaps the best one was a foreign player in Wales asking for a contract that stressed his wife never got to know how much he was earning."

Having built up a steady business in rugby, Palfrey branched out into football, Snooker, athletics and golf with two prized clients being Team GB Olympic stars Steve Backley and Iwan Thomas.

But it was his move into football, a sport where Palfrey has excelled in recent years working with Milan and Brisbane Roar in Australia, where the reputation of agents in the round-ball game was to tar the former chartered surveyor with the same brush.

“I began to get some abuse and being called a parasite," he added. "Fans would either love you because you brought a player to the club or hate you for taking one away."

The demise of Celtic Warriors

But rugby too had it's downsides and no more so than when the Celtic Warriors were disbanded by the WRU leaving many of Palfrey's clients out of work.

"The Celtic Warriors debacle was a very challenging time for me," he admitted. "There were a lot of upset people at the time and players out of work and it really should never have been allowed to happen.

"The lows were when you had conflicts.

"You could see what’s best for a player but you had to wait for them as they are already tied into another deal. It was frustrating when you think what you could have done for them."

He then went on to run the Singapore Rugby Union, spend time in Australia heading up the commercial department of Brisbane Roar Football Club and travelling through Asia as the Head of Sales for Inter Milan.

Inter Milan's vice president and former Italian football icon Javier Zanetti

There he would mix with a whole new set of sporting icons including the Nerazzuri's vice-president and football legend Javier Zanetti, who played 615 games for Inter and made 143 appearances for Argentina.

It was there that Palfrey got to learn just how much footballers are hero-worshipped.

"He had a phone line with the Pope," says Palfrey.

"And there was something like a three month waiting list to see Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper in the city.

"The only man who could jump the queue was Zanetti.

“Inter Milan was probably the best experience of my life and I wanted to work for one of the best sporting brands in the world and Inter are certainly that.

“Whether it was walking into their trophy room or meeting Zanetti, who is treated like a god in Milan, was incredible and the history of the shirt with Pirelli was fantastic."

Palfrey was based in Jakarta while his family had a house in Bali and a typical week would take in business meetings in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore as well as regular trips to the Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

“It was fascinating and very different to what I thought it was going to be and I’ve learned a lot," he added. “I was based in Inter Milan owner Erick Thohir’s office in Indonesia."

Coming home

Now he's swapped life with the San Siro giants for a house on the Sully coast outside of Cardiff.

And while still having business interests overseas, he is relishing the prospect of working again in Wales having set up a base in Cardiff.

“Refreshing is a sponsorship agency looking at best practice from the experiences I’ve gathered around the world," he said.

“If a Welsh rugby region came to me what I could offer them is that experience I’ve gathered from best practice in football.

“That’s global thinking and thinking bigger about their brand and the revenue channels you could create around that brand.

“If you looked for example what the Scarlets have achieved recently and their conveyor belt of developing young players then surely that would be a really good proposition to say this is our coaching philosophy.

Tadhg Beirne of Scarlets with the trophy in Dublin last May

“I would love to help with Welsh rugby but to help them in the right way because you almost want to elevate yourself out of Wales and help with the global thinking I could bring.

“You think there’s an opportunity for the Scarlets brand to certainly go into America as PRO12 champions.

“The PRO14 is certainly an interesting competition taking in South African and in the future American clubs. How do you capitalise on that and develop your fans base and commercialise it?

"I certainly would be pushing for our regions to strike first in America and push the brand.

"We’ve had some good American players here and good coaching connections with Darren Morris for example.

"It's not a giant leap to develop a partnership over there that links clubs through academies or coaching.

“It’s a long term strategy that could well bear fruit in three to five years."

With global thinking, don't bet against Palfrey having business talks in Welsh rugby circles in the near future even though days of negotiations with a naked coach are long gone.